We monitor over 400 blogs and sites, your Filofax/Organiser blog posts could appear in this list, just contact philofaxy at gmail dot com to be added to our monitoring list.

We can not guarantee people will read your posts, but we know there is a higher chance of people reading your posts and returning to read other posts if you make them interesting with pictures and good hints and tips. Do not forget to give your posts a title...

Your Filofax/Organiser posts could appear in this list, just contact philofaxy at gmail dot com to be added to our monitoring list.

We are on the look out for more people to take part in Reader Under the Spotlight. If you would like to appear in this feature then please contact Steve : philofaxy at gmail dot com Thank you.

And have you tried reading one of my Flipboard magazines yet? It works great on a tablet or smart phone, but you can view them on a desktop machine as well. Be sure to Follow the ones you like and you will get notifications when I update them.

30 December 2016

It's the last Free For All Friday of the year! I want to take this opportunity to thank all of our readers, new and long-term. We really appreciate your support, interest, enthusiasm, conversations, and input. We have a wonderful online community here on Philofaxy, and we appreciate everyone who is a part of it!

I also want to thank Steve, Nan and Anita for their dedication to Philofaxy, and especially to Steve for keeping the posts coming day after day, adminning the Facebook groups, Twitter, Instagram, and all the other Philofaxy online locations. I have really enjoyed this experience with all of you and I look forward to much more Philofaxy fun in 2017!

Here's an end of the year question for you: What has been the most useful tip you learned here on Philofaxy?

And as always on Fridays, feel free to ask/ discuss anything ring-binder related!

29 December 2016

So if you was expecting a podcast today fear not, Karine and I have had a week off and we will be back with the next episode next week. We have had a great response to our request for topic suggestions, so there will be plenty of episodes coming up next year. But keep sending us your suggestions.

So this year has been more or less the same as many previous years on the blog. Hopefully 2017 will be the same but with a few changes as we go but no drastic changes.

Our visitor numbers have fallen over the last few years as more people spend more time on social media sites these days. However, we still have a core of readers who continue to visit and to contribute and comment on the various posts, and thank you all for your continued support.

We continue to welcome appropriate guest posts, and reader posts for the Sunday slots, we have run out of those at the moment, so if you would like to appear them please contact me.

I will be initially be creating year planners for 2018 and beyond, then I will be gradually working my way through the suite to create monthly inserts, weekly and daily inserts etc.

I hope to continue doing reviews of different brands of organisers as they become available.

We will be hosting some more meet ups in UK and Europe during 2017, please look out for announcements.

The Skype round tables will continue each month, everyone is welcome to participate and we always have some friendly discussions this last year.

Web Finds continue to be popular, although finding new posts each week can be a little variable!

On a personal/Philofaxy front I have started an experiment. Whilst I'm fairly happy with using just an A5 organiser at the moment. I wanted to try using some of our A6 inserts to make sure they are 'fit for purpose'. The easiest way to do this is to of course use them for real.

So I'm running both in parallel at the moment for at least a couple of months to see where I need more space on the page or less space. This is mainly to confirm the sizing and layout of the A6 inserts.

26 December 2016

So today we start that post Christmas pre New Year week, it is a sort of lull in the consumer society battle!

Some people will be trawling the interwebs looking for the great deals in the sales (or may be that's just a UK thing? ) Or recovering from over-eating/drinking yesterday! But today starts the last week of the year.

This is the week I start my annual tidy up of my planner, get my new inserts for 2017 fully marked up with key dates to remember. I will also do a sort of an annual tidy up of my address pages as well.

I will also be managing my passwords this year going through them and updating them if they are more than 6 months old. So many of them these days too.

What will you be doing this week? Nothing to do, you could always listen to one of our podcasts or consider appearing on Philofaxy with one of our reader posts or may be write a guest post for us.

We monitor over 400 blogs and sites, your Filofax/Organiser blog posts could appear in this list, just contact philofaxy at gmail dot com to be added to our monitoring list.

We can not guarantee people will read your posts, but we know there is a higher chance of people reading your posts and returning to read other posts if you make them interesting with pictures and good hints and tips. Do not forget to give your posts a title...

Your Filofax/Organiser posts could appear in this list, just contact philofaxy at gmail dot com to be added to our monitoring list.

23 December 2016

As the end of the year approaches, I've been mulling over some ideas and finalising my Filofax New Year's resolutions:

Number one - to not buy or sell any more binders! Since writing my post about zero spending, all four that I'd planned to keep have been sold or returned. I will be starting 2017 with three (carefully chosen) binders which incorporate all my favourite features/qualities - more posts to come

Use up the supplies that I have

Use the accessories that I have, or give them away - e.g. my Muji checklist stamp that fell down the back of a cupboard years ago and recently found whilst playing with the cat, or a Coleto multi pen that I won in a give away and had forgotten about

Do an end of year review - to consider what's working well or not and to help me simplify

Write more Philofaxy posts and finally get round to being a guest on the podcast.

Do you set any planner New Year's resolutions?

And as always on Fridays, please free to discuss/ask anything ring-binder related.

22 December 2016

Can the digital planning world mix with the analogue planning world? Can they over lap, can they work alongside each other.

In this episode we discuss how the two methods can co-operate and complement each other when organising your task lists.

If you have ideas for future episodes please send them to steve at philofaxy dot com

Show Notes (timings approximate)
00:00 - Introductions
02:30 - When is something a to-do list item and when is it a calendar item
04:30 - Splitting your to-do list between electronic reminders and paper reminders
06:30 - To do list apps that allow for time zones?
07:30 - When travelling use paper!
10:00 - Routines app
10:30 - Use your paper planner as the back up
14:00 - Setting times for tasks
15:00 - The moving of tasks in to the calendar (photo below)
17:20 - Using different inserts to filter down from yearly to daily timings
19:00 - Enhanced Time Manager Insert with more appointment time slots
20:00 - Using your email in-box as your to-do list or not using it like this
21:00 - Reducing your in-box to zero
22:00 - Auto archive emails that you have read and actioned but take control of your in-box
25:40 - Note down on your planner to respond to communications and note the source
27:45 - Unsubscribe from unwanted clutter
28:30 - Use that delete button

NB: A5 is in A4 format so it can be scaled to suit A5 or A6 size. Personal is for printing direct on Personal size paper.Presenters - Karine Tovmassian and Steve MortonEditing and production - Steve Morton

21 December 2016

It was thirty years ago this month in December 1986 possibly this week in December that year that I became the owner of a Filofax Winchester.

Life was very different back then for me. I was in my late 20's I was about to become a father for the one and only time within the next few weeks. We had moved in to our family home earlier that year. I was working in an office in Central London, I commuted up to London each morning.

At home we had no computers, although I used one at work. We only had four channels to watch on TV. We bought newspapers and magazines from the newsagents, borrowed books from the local library. Sounds a bit primitive I suppose!

By early 1987 my briefcase would have looked something like this.

My Filofax Winchester, a pager, my Texas Instruments (TI56) calculator, a Walkman for music from cassette or radio, and the daily papers. May be a book or two and my lunch!

Before you ask why have I still got newspapers from 1987... they date from the day my son was born. On that day in 1987 one of the front page stories was about the kidnapping of Terry Waite the Archbishop of Canterbury's Special Envoy who was trying to negotiate with people in Beirut who had taken hostages, only to become one himself.

I had seen an article in one of the Sunday newspaper supplements about Filofax organisers and how they were the 'latest must have' for 'Young Upwardly Mobile People' and I had to have one!

So my Filofax Winchester was a Christmas gift I think, I really can't remember! But I recall struggling to understand what all the different inserts available where and trying to figure out the diary insert options. I did have a catalogue which I had picked up from a shop in Kingsway in London.

My Winchester has stood the test of time quite well I think. The plastic cap on the popper cracked and fell off a few years ago, but I cleaned up the metal cap that was left behind and painted it with a spot of enamel paint.

The edges give away its age quite a bit if you look really close under strong lighting. And the edges and the corners have some 'curl' to them. The calf leather has a lovely shine to it from all the handling it has had over the years. The dividers and A-Z index tabs are the original ones I bought back then.

Organisers came empty back then so you had to decide what you wanted to fill it with. I use it these days as a store for my diary pages from 1987-1989.

The Winchester only has an ID pocket in the front inside cover, there are no credit card slots, just pockets. The large flap covering the pockets at the front and back also act as ring protectors.

The credit card insert is also an original one from the 1980's

It has a fairly small single pen loop underneath the clasp.

The rings measure seven eighths of an inch (approx 23mm) in size. They still close nice and tightly. I did venture underneath the cover plate for a Philofaxy post a few years ago, but they have never been taken out.

Diary inserts didn't have any information pages, you could buy National and International Data Sets for each year to add to your organiser.

During 1987 I used a week on two pages with white paper, but in 1988 I went over to a cotton cream paper insert. As you can see the pages have gone quite brown in colour giving the passing of time.

I've photoshopped out the notes on the pages! My notes during 1987 make interesting reading mainly about our son and his arrival in to the world and what I was doing at work and at home. I really wasn't using it as a planner at all, more a journal. I hadn't learnt how to use it correctly!

By the early 1990's I had moved over to using an electronic Casio Diary for reminders and appointments, and then later a Psion 5mx and other electronic gadgets. So the Winchester sat in my desk at home un-used but not forgotten about.

When I started my new job in 2005 I started using it again because 'personal electronic devices' where not permitted in the office because of the security around the job I was doing at the time. But a Filofax was ok. So I rediscovered my Winchester and started to using it again.

I think by 2006 I had bought a Finsbury A5 because it was easier for me to print inserts for it and then by accident I discovered Philofaxy..... Nan invited me to join her and Laurie in 2009 and the rest is history I suppose!

Naturally I could never part with the Winchester, so many memories, it will keep going for another 30 years or more.

Not that I can say the same for the pager, you can only set the date up to 2004, after that it goes back to 1984!

19 December 2016

You will be very familiar with the original version of this insert. It has been my first choice for the last 5 years. Having created it in Personal and A6 variants and recently producing new versions of the layout I thought why not do a new version of the A5 version as well.

This is the original version for A5 size which is still available to download on our Diary Inserts Page. You will find versions for 2016 and 2017 there.

A5 Enhanced Time Management Week View.

You can also customise this version yourself if you wish using the source files.

This third variation adds in some more appointment slots. The right hand page remains as the previous version.

We are making the design available today as ready to download and print sets for 2017. These come as Word documents or PDFs. If using the PDF files be sure to set it to print at full size as explained here for A5 size paper. This is the four line version as shown above.

When you've made all the changes you like to the template, you can perform a mail merge to create your own insert for any period you like. Check out our Free Diary Inserts link if you want more information on how to do this, including videos.

Once again a big thank you to Ray at 'My Life All In One Place' for his hard work and co-operation with helping to create and support us with all these inserts.

18 December 2016

If you are new to the site or you have been here for a while, this post is a way to show you around so you get the most from the site.

As you might have seen there is a lot of information on here and you might have problems remembering where everything is, so we hope to be able to help you out with how to find things to get the most out of the site.

So looking at the Home page you are on now, below the banner you will see: Home, About, FAQ etc

Home: Takes you back to the start page from where ever you are on the site, clicking on the banner does the same.

About: How to contact us at Philofaxy and some background on the contributors.

AdSpot: This is our readers advert page, you can place a wanted or for sale advert for your Filofax goods here free of charge. However, we do recommend donating to one of our favourite charities, but it's based on an honesty system, we don't check up on who has made donations and who hasn't. This page is great because you are buying from people that do understand the Filofax range unlike some Ebay sellers... Please read our Sellers Guide before sending in your advert.Catalogues - A vast collection of old Filofax and Lefax catalogues for you to use for research purposes

Diary Inserts: A huge collection of diary inserts for A4/A5, Personal and Pocket size for you to download and print yourself.

FAQ: This is a good place to look for the simple often asked questions. We try to up date it from time to time to reflect the current topical questions. But you will find links to a lot of the previous posts on key topics like punches etc there.

Files: This the home for all our downloadable template files which you are welcome to customise to your own needs or just print them off as they are.

Links: Links to lots of blogs and other Filofax related sites.

Suppliers: Looking for a Filofax or inserts or accessories, then this page is a good place to start.

Searching Philofaxy - With in excess of 3500 posts on Philofaxy spread over 11 years, finding exactly the information you want could be quite a task... however we do have some tools to help you:

Search - Pop a key word in to the search box in the sidebar and the search tool will find all of the posts with that keyword in it.

Labels - Further down the sidebar you will find the label cloud again this will find all the posts with those labels on the posts. We try to label all posts, although some of the earlier ones are unlabelled... another job still to be done!

Email - If you want to receive each post by email, pop your email in to the subscribe by email box and follow the instructions. This service is provided by Feedburner. They will send you a verification email which you have to click a link in to confirm your email address in the usual way.

Flickr - As mentioned above there is a Flickr group for sharing your Filofax photos and ideas

Linking back to Philofaxy - If you would like to link back to Philofaxy from your website or blog we have a 'badge' with the exact code which you will find at the bottom of the side bar.

Regular Posts on Philofaxy

Free For All Tuesday - Questions and Answers on any Filofax related topic

Free For All Friday - General discussion, open house for anything Filofax related

Webfinds - Each weeks round up of other Filofax related posts on the web

Reader Under The Spotlight(RUTS) - Where we focus on a reader and ask them questions and sometimes get some surprising responses. If you would like to appear on RUTS, just email philofaxy at gmail dot com and we will send you the questions and instructions.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Plannerverse - a regular podcast featuring Steve and Karine who discuss a wide range of topics and subjects. Each one is about 30 minutes in length, take a listen and subscribe.

Other Philofaxy Events

Skype Roundtable Voice and Text Chats - once a month we have a Skype video/voice conference, this is open to anybody to join in. It is an open agenda and we don't only get to talk about Filofax things. People taking part can be spread around the world, so it can be quite educational as well as good fun. Look out for announcements on the blog about when the next one will be. Generally they are the first Sunday of the month, but they can move slightly if this conflicts with public holidays or Steve's travel arrangements!

Meet Ups - We have held several very successful meet ups, they vary in size from as little as two or three people up to twelve people, these have been held in London, New York, France, Holland, Belgium with other ones planned for other countries around the world.
Although meeting 'people off the internet' can sometimes seem a little odd, we all have at least one interest in common and everyone I've met at all the different meet ups have been great people to sit and chat with.

Guest Posts on Philofaxy
We welcome people to do guest posts on Philofaxy, but they must be about ring bound planners of some type or be associated with planners, time management in some way. We do not respond to requests to post links along with guest posts about pensions, raising a family, investment opportunities in the Scilly Isles, etc. etc.... yes we get frequent offers like this in the Philofaxy in-box! If you would like to do a genuine guest post this post will be a great help to you.

That was a bit of a lightening tour around the site and some of our activities. Please do add a comment on to posts, we love to get feedback and we do read all the comments.

If there's something you haven't understood or there's a topic we haven't covered that is Filofax related please get in touch with us and we will do our best to respond to your email within a day or so.

We monitor over 400 blogs and sites, your Filofax/Organiser blog posts could appear in this list, just contact philofaxy at gmail dot com to be added to our monitoring list.

We can not guarantee people will read your posts, but we know there is a higher chance of people reading your posts and returning to read other posts if you make them interesting with pictures and good hints and tips. Do not forget to give your posts a title...

Your Filofax/Organiser posts could appear in this list, just contact philofaxy at gmail dot com to be added to our monitoring list.